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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26395612">A letter to you, a child</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/pseuds/limeta'>limeta</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, POV First Person, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Therapy, Voldemort Lives (Harry Potter), write a letter to your younger self</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:22:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,073</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26395612</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/pseuds/limeta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Voldemort doesn't die. Gets saddled with therapy. Has to write a letter to himself. Needless to say he is a tad peeved.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A letter to you, a child</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A letter to you, a child. I do not intend to take this wholly seriously as I find it a very silly exercise in restraint and emotional control. She tells me I am supposed to let my emotions run rampant throughout this agony of a task, but I am going to fly beyond such trivial matters and tell you, in the most layman words possible: it does not get better. People have lied to you, are lying to you, and will continue to lie to you until the day they die. I say they, of course, because you will have ridden yourself of that pesky, pesky inconvenience which some people derisively call mortality.</p><p>I am yet to fully understand what I am to do with this letter. Perhaps I will have to give it to her to read. Yes, your worst fears have been realised – Lord Voldemort – a name of your own creation and liberation – has been hospitalized... <span class="u">again</span>.</p><p>It is, I must admit, not nearly as distressing as it was the first time. I get company from time to time even. However, she insists that I do not spend too much of my time focusing on my ’past misconduct’ and ’fantastical grandeur’ that ’verges closely to sociopathic narcissism’. Is she a good therapist? Well, I would not know. Nor would you for that matter. We tend to avoid them if at all possible. This is foreign territory to me.</p><p>This is not to say that we have lost. She tells me not to cross things out because I will never get through to end, but I want to cross out the previous sentence because you do not even have an idea of what I have lost. You are a child in Wool’s thinking of a better life where a family might show mercy on you and adopt you, give you a home, a rabbit of your own so you don’t have to kill the other child’s by accident – but, of course, nobody will believe that because you have shown violent tendencies. Mrs. Cole doesn’t want to listen to you, nor will she for that matter. Do not expect anything from Mrs. Cole. On Tuesdays she gets drunk on whisky. Not Wednesdays as the children think. On Wednesdays she entertains benefactors in ways I am uncertain whether or not you know how to explain yet. All in due time, however.</p><p>How does one explain to a child that their life’s work – your life’s work – will perish into a flash of light? All of those years of careful planning, war waging, clinging onto the fact that you will survive even when your closest will not...useless. These people are gone and you are here, at this table, writing a letter to a <em>child</em>.</p><p>You will have an enemy given to you by Fate. You have always believed in fairy tales. When a sister from Ireland told us about fairies we wanted to be changelings so badly we went to a forest nearby the orphanage and begged them to take us. Our mistake was not bringing anything sweet. You will barter with them when you are older and they eat cake how a starving man eats his own fellow man. Yes, that happens. Yes, you try it. No, it is not an experience you enjoy.</p><p>She tells me I have a deep rooted hatred of you and that I ought to speak about it in this letter. Give you advice and all of that nonsense. Here is my advice: fuck Divination, fuck Abraxas Malfoy, fuck Albus Dumbledore, fuck Harry Potter, and fuck therapy. Not particularly in this order and not particularly the same meaning of ’fuck’. Do you even know what that word means? Hopefully you do. You are from London. East London, Woolwich, to be precise.</p><p>There will be people in your life who will want to hurt you. You recognize them a lot easier than the people who want to love you. Call it a defense mechanism, or what have you, but it has kept us alive and it will keep us alive. Do not concern yourself over sexuality and gender roles, it will only cause you grief. Witches and wizards do not put emphasis on this at all. They put emphasis on blood. Again, a thing that will bring you grief. It is unfair, you will say, multiple times, how you neither choose who to be attracted to nor who your parents are. And yet the world chooses to judge you for these very things.</p><p>No, you do not have schizophrenia, you have been misdiagnosed because muggles do not know what the word parselmouth is nor that a child can very well speak to snakes without being <span class="u">crazy</span>. She tells me that is not particularly a good word to use and that I ought to slowly phase it out of my vocabulary. I have nothing more to say on this. Especially not if she will read this letter, which I still find a waste of my valuable time.  </p><p>Let us move to less distraught topics. You will develop an inane fondness of dominos. I prefer the ones who are washed in different colours because the bland black and white ones make me actually count the damned dots, whereas with the coloured ones the colour purple is five and I know without having to force myself. Perhaps I realise I have incriminated myself with this letter as they may decide to punish me for my lack of motivation by taking the coloured dominos away. Those fiends.</p><p>I do not share my room, if you are wondering. Not how I have shared a room with the boys at Wool’s, my Slytherins at Hogwarts, that bloody rent boy whom Burke lets stay on whenever he pleases just above Borgin and Burke’s (it is a shop you will work at for a brief, yet traumatizing time), or with my dear Abraxas at Malfoy Manor. No, here you are... very much alone. With Dostoyevsky. No, I am not a communist for reading Russian literature. Mrs. Cole is wrong for making you think that.</p><p>This letter is proving difficult to write. There is nothing I have to say to you. Things will not get better. But, at least, things will never be <span class="u">as</span> bad as they currently are to you. There is that to consider.</p><p>Yours sincerely,</p><p>Lord Voldemort</p><p> </p><p>PS. Fuck Freud, he has issues greater than mine.</p>
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